


all at once

by vexedcer



Series: brooklyn bridge [3]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Depression, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pre-Slash, they're still not together but they are nearly there. kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-09 01:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11659173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vexedcer/pseuds/vexedcer
Summary: “Everything is bad and I don’t know what to do,” he whispers, suddenly feeling very small.Jace’s arms tighten for a second, like he’s trying to protect him from the world, like his depression is something Jace can fight for him. They both know he can’t. Jace will probably still try, though.





	all at once

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning for: suicide references, depression, blood (unrelated to a physical injury), and possibly anxiety ?

He doesn't tell Clary about any of it. Not the bridge, not her ex-boyfriend-ex-brother holding onto his hands like he was trying to stop him from drifting.

He will tell her eventually - he knows he will. They'll be watching some movie, something absolutely ridiculous that cannot possibly hold their attention for more than ten minutes at a time, and they'll talk about everything between mouthfuls of popcorn.

That's how a lot of their revelations come, over movies with believably low Rotten Tomatoes scores.

Somehow they always end up rewatching  _ Batman & Robin. _

But he doesn't tell her yet - everything is too raw; their relationship is an open wound right now. He knows they'll heal and the scar this  mess becomes will fade, maybe into nothingness. 

But that doesn't mean it's not painful right now.

He spends a lot of time at Magnus’ now, given that he lives there, but he also spends a lot of time with the man himself. 

There's something incredibly calming about the way Magnus moves. He has this fluid grace, like all of his muscles are liquid under his skin - maybe they are. He knows nothing about warlock biology.

Whether it's magic over a potion or a simple flick of his hair, his moves are slick and graceful. 

Jace also becomes a regular face in Magnus’ apartment - at first he figured it was normal, to consult a warlock on the going’s-on of the Shadow World or to visit his brother who is essentially living here now, but the reality is, Jace is visiting Simon.

They take up his and Clary's habit of watching the so-bad-it’s-funny movies Netflix has to offer. Much of his amusement now is derived from Jace's utter confusion at whatever the fuck is happening on the laptop in front of him.

Somehow a friendship has bloomed between them. All it took was some subpar mundane movies and a suicide attempt.

But somewhere, deep down in his still chest, there's an inkling of a thing he doesn't want to acknowledge. It's been only two weeks since the Institute, where he bit into Jace's flesh, drank him nearly dry on that couch while wearing his best friend's/girlfriend-at-the-time’s skin.

He remembers how drawn he'd felt to Camille, like he was in love with her, like it was a drug. 

It  _ was _ a drug. The vampire venom felt so good, made him feel invincible. But that love - it burnt deep in his stomach, made his heart pound. He has distance now to see that it was the intoxicating feeling of flying to made him love her, but -

He wonders how Jace feels.

It's only been two weeks since he took long pulls out of his wrist, since he became a Daylighter. There wasn't even two weeks between the first time Camille bit him and when he crawled out of his own grave. He doesn't know how long it takes to sober up from one bite, he didn't live long enough to find out.

But he wonders -

Maybe it's nothing. Maybe he's overthinking it. Nephilim might not be effected the same way, demon blood mixing with Angel blood that way, they must cancel each other out, right?

Or maybe it might be because Camille is a woman and Simon  _ likes _ women. Maybe that's how it works.

He doesn't know Jace's sexuality, but if he knows his luck then a guy like Jace is as straight as they come. 

Between Clary, and the ladies who give him the stink eye in the Hunter's Moon, he knows Jace likes women, at very least. And if he likes men? He probably wouldn't go for someone likes Simon. He wasn't kidding when he said he wasn't Jace's type, way back when he grabbed his hand in the entrance way of the Institute.

He's too nerdy and gangly, and he talks too much. The coolest thing about him is that he's in a band, but he's basically Brendon Urie in a  _ Panic! At The Disco _ situation at this point. Just dramatically less rich and much more undead.

He wouldn’t describe himself as heterosexual - people are far too attractive to limit himself to just one gender. 

And if he finds Jace attractive? Well. It's not a thing, really, because Jace  _ is _ attractive. He's know it since Jace magically appeared before him when Clary was talking to thin air, with his shirt ridden up to reveal the glowing tattoo.

But the thing under his ribs, hidden well away from his consciousness, is much more than an admiration of form.

It's thick and overly sweet like honey, sticky and nearly impossible to pour out. Slow moving.

He resents it. 

Because his life really does want to fuck him over, doesn't it? First the Shadow World dragging him screaming into it's ranks, endangering his family forever, then his best friend breaking his heart into a million pieces, plus the return of his mental illness without a safe way of coping anymore. 

Now his ex-girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend-ex-brother is his current crush  _ on top of  _ the depression that has settled into his bones. 

The universe really just wants him to suffer, voyeuristic and cruel. He should honestly just go back to the bridge. It's daytime and someone might try and stop him, call the cops but he's a vampire, if he wants to jump off a bridge then surely he can do it. 

Except -

Jace said to talk to him if this happened again, talk to any of them because they care about him. 

Magnus’ apartment is empty. Alec is at the Institute like usual during the day, and Magnus is with a client for the afternoon. The only heartbeats are the cats curled up on the balconies.

He fumbles for his phone, lost in the waves of the bedsheets. He feels horrible and guilty listening as the line rings.

“Hello?” Jace says, voice backed by the soft hum of the Institute. He can hear other voices talking in the background, Alec and Izzy, he thinks, possibly even Clary.

“I - can you come over?” He whispers. 

“Is everything alright?” Jace's voice is hushed, but Simon can hear how the talking quiets behind him. 

“No,” he tells him, “Everything's - it's too much, I can't -” 

“I'll be over soon,” Jace says, voice firm across the line, before hanging up.

He drops the phone into the mess of the bedsheets behind him, and braces his elbows on his knees to hold his head up. His socks are flat against Magnus’ carpet, over the edge of the bed in a move to try and ground himself. It doesn't work.

He's not sure what Jace being here is really going to accomplish other than showing him how vulnerable and pathetic he is. 

He hopes that maybe it'll quiet his brain down, at least for a while. Everything inside his head feels so messy and difficult, hard to comprehend in a similar way to not wearing his glasses while concentrating.

He pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes, watching the fizzles of colour against the back of his lids as he presses in harder.

He listens to the sounds of the cats’ heartbeats above and outside, trying to ground himself in the repetition. If he listens, reaches out beyond that he can hear the turn of the city, the hum of car engines -

The pounding sound of feet hurrying along the corridor, the open and shut off the front door, the cardio-quickened hum of a pulse -

“Simon?”

Jace barrels in, is on his knees in front of him in seconds, hands around his wrists. He tugs them gently to try and get him to look at him.

He moves his hands from his eyes, the colours flickering out as he takes in Jace's worried, pale face.

He's not sure what it is; the depression eating away at every happy moment he's ever had, the drop off of the bridge beckoning him to come, the tired way his whole body wants to just give up and starve - he crumbles.

He's never been much of a depression-crier. Kid’s movies, dogs dying, his dad's anniversary - dogs dying in kid’s movies on his dad's anniversary - those make him cry. 

But depression usually just makes him numb, empty, distant. Everything feels far away and unreal, like they're not his but still attached to him like balloons.

Jace has his arms around him, holding him tight while rocking just slightly. He makes soft noises that have no meaning to comfort him. He's holding onto Simon as fiercely as he holds onto him.

All at once, he's glad that Jace is here. He's hard and soft at the same time, strong but gentle. He feels secure in his body for the first time all day.

The tears keep coming and his body keeps hitching on breath it doesn't need. Jace's noises devolve into soft hushing noises directed right into his ear.

Jace smells like his cologne and skin, and now Simon's bloody tears, soaking into the cotton shirt under Jace's usual leather jacket.

Jace stands and moves them both onto the bed, rather than the hunched awkward position of them clutching each other at the edge with knees digging into the floor. Simon, still hiccuping sobs, lands on Jace's collar bone as he lies back on the disheveled sheets. 

He curls towards Jace's body, the heat pulling him in. It’s hard to explain that he feels cold sometimes. His body is always cold now, which is fine - usually he’s indifferent to the temperature of his environments, but it feels like the inside of his head is cold. The thrum of Jace's blood and the shape of his body bleeds warmth.

He doesn't remember Jace wrestling his jacket off while moving them but there's only a damp shirt under his cheek. His breathing is still uneven and his eyes are still weeping, but he feels much more in control now.

He can feel the thump of his heart under him, steady and strong and very real. Jace’s hand is on his wrist still, fingers lingering like it’s trying to find a phantom pulse.

They listen to the quiet together for a few minutes, letting him calm down from the emotional upheaval that is a Tuesday afternoon.

Now that he's calmed down, he feels exhausted, heavy and limp. But he's warm. He's not alone. Somehow he feels better. 

“What happened?” Jace asks softly.

He burrows further into Jace's neck. “Everything just got - too much. There was too much happening inside my head and I didn't know how to process any of it.”

Jace's thumb moves gently against the back of his hand, drawing invisible half circles into the skin in a mindless way. It feels good.

“What did you tell the others?” 

He feels the sign under his cheek before it comes out of his mouth. “I told Alec I had an emergency to take care of - I didn't tell Izzy and Clary anything.”

“And he just let you go?”

“I think he knew it was about you. He didn't try to stop me, just told me to be back by midnight.”

He feels a flash of embarrassment. He told Magnus it was fine to tell Alec what was going on with him because it would probably make more sense with how he mopes in Magnus’ apartment, how Jace comes by so frequently but never actually to see Alec.

As an abstract idea, he's fine with Alec knowing. But in practice, he feels incredibly guilty for dragging one of his best men out if the fight against a genocidal mastermind.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles into Jace's chest. “There's so much going on and I can't keep it together for five minutes while you're trying to save the world.”

“Simon, shut up,” Jace tells him, but there's no bite in it the way there would have been a few weeks ago. “We all have personal stuff going on right now.”

He takes a steadying breath, concentrating on the smell of clean skin and cotton. He looks up at Jace to see his eyes on the ceiling. “Even you?”

Jace lowers his gaze to his face, eyes honest. “Even me.”

He rests his cheek back down and closes his eyes. “Everything is bad and I don’t know what to do,” he whispers, suddenly feeling very small.

Jace’s arms tighten for a second, like he’s trying to protect him from the world, like his depression is something Jace can fight for him. They both know he can’t. Jace will probably still try, though.

“One step at a time,” he says back, with his nose in his hair. His breath fans warm across his scalp.

He’s not sure how long they lie there, actually cuddling, but he whispers, “I’m glad I called you,” into the quiet room.

“Me too, Si.”

**Author's Note:**

> i don't feel as good abt this fic as the other too, but i'm still gonna post it as is bc its quite cathartic to release heavy fics into the world.


End file.
